Dazey, Yes, I do agree with yo--mostly. I think you are right that we are talking about different kinds of boredom and that we need better terms. I guess what I feel like I'm hearing a delineation that if the boredom that happens at home (where we are teaching our kids to entertain themselves and explore) it's a "good" kind and if they are bored at school it is the "bad" kind. I just think that that is too coarse a distinction. I don't think that if fair to the school and I worry that it sends the wrong message to the kids--that it is not their responsilbity to address their boredom. The child has a responsibility to address their boredom as well. I think DS does get a lot out of being bored at school. I asked him last night how he gets through repetitive lessons and he came up with a list of about 10 things he does that indicate to me that he his learning useful skills (social, emotional, advocacy, maturational, and intellectual). In no way is he learning to shut down, so I really feel like his school boredom is a good thing.
But I have not taken an approach that he should just suffer and be bored. I have coached him a lot on how to get to the point where boredom is beneficial. And we have both advocated for him a lot and we have several accomdations in place. So you are right, Dazey, I think we are in basically the same ballpark. And if we had done these things and I saw my kid shutting down, I would definitely act.
I have a hard time when I feel like we lose the middle ground in these discussions and I tend to like to bring us back to the middle when I see the discussion drifting too far to the extremes! So now we have to address the vocabulary. How do we distinguish between our healthy boredom and our soul-crushing boredom?
